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Trust is the most valuable asset any company has

Wednesday, November 4th, 2015

Valeant Pharmaceuticals has suffered a crisis of trust over the last few weeks. More specifically, the trust that investors had in the company was substantially diminished in the wake of revelations that Valeant had an unclear but apparently too-cozy relationship with specialty pharmacy called Philidor. The loss in trust in this case was quite concrete, measured by a substantial drop in the company’s share price.

The source of this loss of trust was, as is generally the case, a question about the company’s ethics.

Doing business in the long run absolutely requires ethics. At the ery least, doing business requires a degree of mutual respect, embodied in our commitment to getting things from others by offering them what we think they want in return. It also requires a commitment to basic honesty, and a commitment to honour our contracts. These ethical basics are essential because they are the foundation of trust. And if you don’t trust someone—at some level—you’re just not going to do business with them.

If trust enables business, then trust has a real value, in real dollars and cents. So what, then, is the dollar value of trust? I estimate the dollar value of trust, within the global economy, at roughly $102 trillion—in other words, the entire nominal Gross World Product for 2014. Without trust, all commerce on the planet would literally grind to a halt.

The fact that trust is crucial in markets is evidenced by the fact that businesses have come up with such a dizzying array of mechanisms designed to generate trust—everything from brands (which carry reputations) through to warranties, return policies, endorsements and third-party guarantors.

But what exactly is trust? What does it mean to trust someone? Functionally, it’s an expectation that someone will behave in certain ways. Trust is also an attitude—part calculation, part emotion—that involves an expectation of goodwill, or at least good behaviour. It is an expectation that the other party to a transaction will not do us harm. As my friend and fellow philosopher Daryl Koehn once put it, trust is a mean between paranoia and foolish faith.

But what happens when trust is broken? How can a company like Valeant (or Volkswagen, for that matter) regain the trust of consumers and the investing public? There are many ways to rebuild trust, and none of them is quick.

A company that has lost the trust of the investing public is likely going to need to show a consistent pattern of trustworthy behaviour over a substantial period of time. And the focus, here, is on the showing. CEO Michael Pearson has said how important ethics is to the company. And—present appearances aside—that may well be true. But in the light of the current wave of mistrust, the company is going to need to do more. It is going to need to engage in substantial disclosures, far beyond detailing the nature of its relationship with Philidor. In the face of a failure of disclosure, the company may well find that that it needs to engage in more disclosure than any company—even one with nothing to hide—would be fully comfortable with.

Trust is the most valuable asset any company has

Wednesday, November 4th, 2015

Valeant Pharmaceuticals has suffered a crisis of trust over the last few weeks. More specifically, the trust that investors had in the company was substantially diminished in the wake of revelations that Valeant had an unclear but apparently too-cozy relationship with specialty pharmacy called Philidor. The loss in trust in this case was quite concrete, measured by a substantial drop in the company’s share price.

The source of this loss of trust was, as is generally the case, a question about the company’s ethics.

Doing business in the long run absolutely requires ethics. At the ery least, doing business requires a degree of mutual respect, embodied in our commitment to getting things from others by offering them what we think they want in return. It also requires a commitment to basic honesty, and a commitment to honour our contracts. These ethical basics are essential because they are the foundation of trust. And if you don’t trust someone—at some level—you’re just not going to do business with them.

If trust enables business, then trust has a real value, in real dollars and cents. So what, then, is the dollar value of trust? I estimate the dollar value of trust, within the global economy, at roughly $102 trillion—in other words, the entire nominal Gross World Product for 2014. Without trust, all commerce on the planet would literally grind to a halt.

The fact that trust is crucial in markets is evidenced by the fact that businesses have come up with such a dizzying array of mechanisms designed to generate trust—everything from brands (which carry reputations) through to warranties, return policies, endorsements and third-party guarantors.

But what exactly is trust? What does it mean to trust someone? Functionally, it’s an expectation that someone will behave in certain ways. Trust is also an attitude—part calculation, part emotion—that involves an expectation of goodwill, or at least good behaviour. It is an expectation that the other party to a transaction will not do us harm. As my friend and fellow philosopher Daryl Koehn once put it, trust is a mean between paranoia and foolish faith.

But what happens when trust is broken? How can a company like Valeant (or Volkswagen, for that matter) regain the trust of consumers and the investing public? There are many ways to rebuild trust, and none of them is quick.

A company that has lost the trust of the investing public is likely going to need to show a consistent pattern of trustworthy behaviour over a substantial period of time. And the focus, here, is on the showing. CEO Michael Pearson has said how important ethics is to the company. And—present appearances aside—that may well be true. But in the light of the current wave of mistrust, the company is going to need to do more. It is going to need to engage in substantial disclosures, far beyond detailing the nature of its relationship with Philidor. In the face of a failure of disclosure, the company may well find that that it needs to engage in more disclosure than any company—even one with nothing to hide—would be fully comfortable with.

Chris MacDonald is Associate Professor in the Philosophy Department at Saint Mary's University (Halifax, Canada). He is also Coordinator of SMU's M.A. Programme in Philosophy and he runs the The Business Ethics Blog.